A Critique of Disney's EPCOT and Creating a Futuristic Curriculum
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Georgia Southern University Digital Commons@Georgia Southern Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies, Jack N. Averitt College of Spring 2019 FUTURE WORLD(S): A Critique of Disney's EPCOT and Creating a Futuristic Curriculum Alan Bowers Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd Part of the Curriculum and Instruction Commons, and the Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons Recommended Citation Bowers, Alan, "FUTURE WORLD(S): A Critique of Disney's EPCOT and Creating a Futuristic Curriculum" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1921. https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/1921 This dissertation (open access) is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies, Jack N. Averitt College of at Digital Commons@Georgia Southern. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Georgia Southern. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FUTURE WORLD(S): A Critique of Disney's EPCOT and Creating a Futuristic Curriculum by ALAN BOWERS (Under the Direction of Daniel Chapman) ABSTRACT In my dissertation inquiry, I explore the need for utopian based curriculum which was inspired by Walt Disney’s EPCOT Center. Theoretically building upon such works regarding utopian visons (Bregman, 2017, e.g., Claeys 2011;) and Disney studies (Garlen and Sandlin, 2016; Fjellman, 1992), this work combines historiography and speculative essays as its methodologies. In addition, this project explores how schools must do the hard work of working toward building a better future (Chomsky and Foucault, 1971). Through tracing the evolution of EPCOT as an idea for a community that would “always be in the state of becoming” to EPCOT Center as an inspirational theme park, this work contends that those ideas contain possibilities for how to interject utopian thought in schooling. INDEX WORDS: Utopian curriculum, EPCOT, Disney studies FUTURE WORLD(S): A CRITIQUE OF DISNEY’S EPCOT AND CREATING A FUTURISTIC CURRICULUM by ALAN BOWERS B.A., Georgia Southern University, 2001 M.A.T., Georgia College and State University, 2004 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Georgia Southern University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF EDUCATION STATESBORO, GEORGIA © 2019 ALAN BOWERS All Rights Reserved 1 FUTURE WORLD(S): A CRITIQUE OF DISNEY'S EPCOT AND CREATING A FUTURISTIC CURRICULUM by ALAN BOWERS Major Professor: Daniel Chapman Committee: Julie Garlen George Head John Weaver Electronic Version Approved: May 2019 2 DEDICATION To my wife Jennifer for putting up with me and loving me unconditionally. 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my wife, Jennifer and our three children (Emmie, Allie, and Owen) for being supportive during this entire process. A lot has changed since I began this journey and you sacrificed with me along the way. I am very grateful for their support, patience, and love. I am nothing without you. To my mother, Kathy, who passed away early in this process and to Gary, my father, as we worked through the grief together. Thank you to all of my friends, colleagues, cohort members, and students (past and present). You were with me at every step. A special thanks to David Ondike for talking me off the ledge more than a couple of times and also to Dr. Michael Gibbons for keeping my mind sharp. To my committee: Thank you Dr. Julie Garlen, Dr. John Weaver, Mr. George Head, and especially to Dr. Dan Chapman for all of his help. Thank you all for your feedback and support. And finally to all of the “Disney people” whose work I have enjoyed and researched along the way. You were especially helpful whenever I thought this work was frivolous and pointless; it was you who reminded me that EPCOT Center meant a lot to people other than myself. So, thank you to Walt, Roy, and all of the Disney Imagineers/Employees (who built this immersive playground in the first place), George and Piper Head for meeting with me, Michael Crawford, Foxxy, Mike Lee (Omniluxe), Hoot and Chief, Jeff and Denise, Jim and Len, Martin, those Parkeology guys, Ju-osh, Matt and Nate Parrish, Leonard Kinsey, Sam Gennawey, Jenny Nicholson, Brad Bird, the Plus Ultra Society, Tom and Sarah, Ted Linhart, the Lake Buena Vista Historical Society, and the entire Retro WDW team (Todd, JT, How, and BP Miles). 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………...…………………………………………3 CHAPTER ONE: PROJECT EPCOT…………………………………………………………….8 Welcome to the World of Tomorrow!…………………………………….……………….8 EPCOT as a Research Topic…………………………………………………….……….10 Personal Position…………………………………………………………………..……..13 Curriculum Studies…………………………………………………………………..…..16 Methodologies…………………………………………………………………………...18 Chapter Overview…………………………………………………………………….….23 Theoretical Framework of the Imaginaries……………………………………………....24 The Hornet’s Nest of Disney Literature………………………………………………….30 The Problem of History………………………………………………………..………...33 Spectacle! ……………………………………………………………………………….35 Synthetic Realities……………………………………………………….………………37 There’s a Great Big Beautiful Yesterday………………………………………………...44 Disney as Curriculum………………………………………..…………………………..49 The Pivot……………………………………………………………………….………...51 EPCOT’s Role…………………………………………………………………………...55 Futurism: Part of our Nature? ………………….………………………………………..57 Hopeful Futurism………………………………………………………………………..60 Sustainable Utopianism…………………………………………………………………62 5 CHAPTER TWO: FROM ANIMATOR TO FUTURIST………………………………………64 Welcome to the World of Yesterday! ……………………………………………….......64 The Animator………………………………………………………………………….....67 Technology………………………………………………………………………...…….69 Automatons……………………………………………………………………………....72 The Fourth Discontinuity………………………………………………………………...73 Now is the Time, Now is the Best Time…………………………………………………75 Disneyland U.S.A. ……………………………………………………………………....80 Narrative Control……………………………………………………………………...…83 A Day at the Fair……………………………………………………………………..….86 Hello Florida! ………………………………………………………………………..…..94 The EPCOT Rationale………………………………………………………………..….95 Mapping it out…………………………………………………………………..………101 Lawmakers, Bureaucrats, and Imagineers………………………………………….…..103 EPCOT Citizenry? ………………………………………………………………..……106 Realities and Compromises………………………………………………………...…...109 Economic considerations………………………………………………………..……...110 Death as Commemoration……………………………………………………...……….111 Goodbye EPCOT, Hello EPCOT Center……………………………………………….114 Where’s the Future? ………………………………………..…………………………..116 Finding the Center……………………………………………..……………………….118 6 CHAPTER THREE: EPCOT CENTER……………………………………..…………………121 Welcome to the World of Compromised Vision! ……………………...………………121 Sponsorships and Mapping the Park……………………………………….…………...124 And Now a Word from Our Sponsors………………………………………………….127 Spaceship Earth and Communication…………………………………………………..131 The Land and Agriculture………………………………………………………………138 Horizons and Futurism………………………………………...………………….…….142 Losing the Center………………………………………………..…………….…….….145 CHAPTER FOUR: JOURNEY INTO IMAGINATION………………………………………149 Dystopian Landscapes…………………………………………………..……………..149 Tomorrowland: A Case Study in Utopian Rejection………….………………….….…162 School Deform………………………………………………………………………….167 Welcome to the Dreamport……………………………………...………...……………172 Utopianism Primer………………………………………………..…………………….176 Hope in Schools………………………………………………………………………...180 Journey into Imagination…Again……………………………...………………….……183 Data Driven Hope? …………………………………………………………………….186 CHAPTER FIVE: TOMORROW’S CHILD…………………………………………………...189 Welcome to EPCOT Reborn…………...……………………………………………….189 7 Green Land…………………………………..………………………………………….194 Imagination………………………………………………………..…………………….198 New Horizons…………………………………………….…….……………………….201 REFERENCES………………………………………………………….……………………....208 8 CHAPTER 1 PROJECT EPCOT Welcome to the World of Tomorrow! As an unapologetic EPCOT purist, I refuse to refer to it as the “giant golf ball” but, yes, that is what it looks like if you have never seen it. The enormous Spaceship Earth has served as the visual greeting to guests as they drive into the parking lot of EPCOT (formerly EPCOT Center) at Walt Disney World ever since 1982. In the promotional book, EPCOT CENTER: Creating the World of Tomorrow, Richard Beard (1982) informs us that this massive structure reaches 180 feet into the sky, weighs a million pounds, and has “…an outside ‘skin’ of an aluminum that is smoother than glass, the globe’s facets reflect diffuse images…by night, it glints with the sparkle and illumination…of the galaxies, the stars, the planets it emulates” (p. 26). The structure’s geodesic design and name are an ode to the work of architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller (p. 24). The combination of design elements used to create Spaceship Earth is meant to showcase EPCOT Center’s spirit of achievement in engineering, scale, and utopian outlook. Beard added It is, among other things, the world’s largest geodesic sphere…It started out, less ambitiously, as a dome…but, happily, the bolder vision prevailed. Now the sphere…rises some eighteen stories high…dominating the landscape for miles around, with little to rival its rotund majesty (p. 40). As the gateway to the themed section of EPCOT known as Future World, Spaceship Earth serves several purposes: it supplies the theme park with an instantly recognizable structure, 9 houses a dark ride chronicling the evolution of human communication, and, most importantly, serves as a symbolic centerpiece of EPCOT’s futuristic ambition. Stephen Fjellman (1992) in Vinyl